Analysis of Drugs and Metabolites in Tissues and Other Solid Matrices

Analysis of solid matrices are typically requested to help understand drug and/or metabolites concentrations at potential sites of action or toxicology, or to perform distribution studies when radiolabel is unavailable or cannot be used. Solid samples pose additional challenges for bioanalysis in terms of preparation of homogeneous QC pools, estimation of extraction recovery, supply of control matrix, and as methods may be complex and time-consuming to perform. A short literature survey is presented together with examples of tissue assays for discovery, GLP and clinical studies.     

A New Microplate Screening Method for the Simultaneous Activity Quantification of Feruloyl Esterases, Tannases, and Chlorogenate Esterases

Feruloyl, chlorogenate esterases, and tannases are enzymes useful in phenolic modifications of pharmaceutical relevance as protectors against several degenerative human diseases. Therefore, there is a growing interest in discovering new sources of these enzymes. However, traditional methods for their activity measurements are time-consuming and poorly adapted for high-throughput screening. In this study, a successful new microplate high-throughput screening method for the simultaneous quantification of all mentioned activities is demonstrated. This method allows the detection of activities as low as 1.7 mU ml(-1). Furthermore, reaction rates increased proportionally with the amount of enzyme added, and no interferences with the other commercial hydrolases tested were found. The utility of the method was demonstrated after simultaneously screening feruloyl, chlorogenate esterase, and tannase activities in solid state fermentation extracts obtained during the kinetics of production of 20 fungal strains. Among these, seven strains were positive for at least one of the esterase activities tested. This result shows the potential for the rapid routine screening assays for multiple samples of moderate low to high enzymatic levels.     

High-throughput DNA analysis by microchip electrophoresis

DNA analysis plays a great role in genetic and medical research, and clinical diagnosis of inherited diseases and particular cancers. Development of new methods for high throughput DNA analysis is necessitated with incoming of post human genome era. A new powerful analytical technology, called microchip capillary electrophoresis (MCE), can be integrated with some experimental units and is characterized by high-speed, small sample and reagent requirements and high-throughput. This new technology, which has been applied successfully to the separation of DNA fragments, analysis of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products, DNA sequencing, and mutation detection, for example, will become an attractive alternative to conventional methods such as slab gel electrophoresis, Southern blotting and Northern blotting for DNA analysis. This review is focused on some basic issues about DNA analysis by MCE, such as fabrication methods for microchips, detection system and separation schemes, and several key applications are summarized.     

Bioluminescence and chemiluminescence in drug screening

Drug screening, that is, the evaluation of the biological activity of candidate drug molecules, is a key step in the drug discovery and development process. In recent years, high-throughput screening assays have become indispensable for early stage drug discovery because of the developments in synthesis technologies, such as combinatorial chemistry and automated synthesis, and the discovery of an increasing number of new pharmacological targets.Bioluminescence and chemiluminescence represent suitable detection techniques for high-throughput screening because they allow rapid and sensitive detection of the analytes and can be applied to small-volume samples. In this paper we report on recent applications of bioluminescence and chemiluminescence in drug screening, both for in vitro and in vivo assays. Particular attention is devoted to the latest and most innovative bioluminescence and chemiluminescence-based technologies for drug screening, such as assays based on genetically modified cells, bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET)-based assays, and in vivo imaging assays using transgenic animals or bioluminescent markers. The possible relevance of bioluminescence and chemiluminescence techniques in the future developments of high-throughput screening technologies is also discussed.     

Recent Applications of Carbon Nanomaterials for microRNA Electrochemical Sensing

MicroRNA (miRNA) is an important tumor marker in the human body, and its early detection has a great influence on the survival rate of patients. Although there are many detection methods for miRNA at present such as northern blotting, real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction, microarrays, and others, electrochemical biosensors have the advantages of low detection cost, small instrument size, simple operation, non-invasive detection and low consumption of reagents and solvents, and thus they play an important role in the early detection of cancer. In addition, with the development of nanotechnology, nano-biosensors show great potential. The application of various nanomaterials in the development of electrochemical biosensor has greatly improved the detection sensitivity of electrochemical biosensor. Among them, carbon nanomaterials which have unique electrical, optical, physical and chemical properties have attracted increasing attention. In particular, they have a large surface area, good biocompatibility and conductivity. Therefore, carbon nanomaterials combined with electrochemical methods can be used to detect miRNA quickly, easily and sensitively. In this review, we systematically review recent applications of different carbon nanomaterials (carbon nanotubes, graphene and its derivatives, graphitic carbon nitride, carbon dots, graphene quantum dots and other carbon nanomaterials) for miRNA electrochemical detection. In addition, we demonstrate the future prospects of electrochemical biosensors modified by carbon nanomaterials for the detection of miRNAs, and some suggestions for their development in the near future.     

Ligand-binding assays for cyanobacterial neurotoxins targeting cholinergic receptors

Toxic cyanobacterial blooms are a threat to public health because of the capacity of some cyanobacterial species to produce potent hepatotoxins and neurotoxins. Cyanobacterial neurotoxins are involved in the rapid death of wild and domestic animals by targeting voltage gated sodium channels and cholinergic synapses, including the neuromuscular junction. Anatoxin-a and its methylene homologue homoanatoxin-a are potent agonists of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. Since the structural determination of anatoxin-a, several mass spectrometry-based methods have been developed for detection of anatoxin-a and, later, homoanatoxin-a. Mass spectrometry-based techniques provide accuracy, precision, selectivity, sensitivity, reproducibility, adequate limit of detection, and structural and quantitative information for analyses of cyanobacterial anatoxins from cultured and environmental cyanobacterial samples. However, these physicochemical techniques will only detect known toxins for which toxin standards are commercially available, and they require highly specialized laboratory personnel and expensive equipment. Receptor-based assays are functional methods that are based on the mechanism of action of a class of toxins and are thus, suitable tools for survey of freshwater reservoirs for cyanobacterial anatoxins. The competition between cyanobacterial anatoxins and a labelled ligand for binding to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors is measured radioactively or non-radioactively providing high-throughput screening formats for routine detection of this class of neurotoxins. The mouse bioassay is the method of choice for marine toxin monitoring, but has to be replaced by fully validated functional methods. In this paper we review the ligand-binding assays developed for detection of cyanobacterial and algal neurotoxins targeting the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and for high-throughput screening of novel nicotinic agents.     

毛细管电泳序列分析技术用于在线酶分析研究进展

毛细管电泳技术具有操作简单、样品消耗量少、分离效率高和分析速度快等优势,不仅是一种高效的分离分析技术,而且已经发展成为在线酶分析和酶抑制研究的强有力工具。酶反应全程的实时在线监测,可以实现酶反应动力学过程的高时间分辨精确检测,以更准确地获得反应机制和反应速率常数,有助于更好地了解酶反应机制,从而更全面深入地认识酶在生物代谢中的功能。此外,准确、快速的在线酶抑制剂高通量筛选方法的发展,对加快酶抑制类药物的研发以及疾病的临床诊断亦具有重要意义。电泳媒介微分析法（EMMA）和固定化酶微反应器（IMER）是毛细管电泳酶分析技术中常用的在线分析方法。这两种在线酶分析法的进样方式通常为流体动力学进样和电动进样,无法实现酶反应过程中的无干扰序列进样分析。近年来,基于快速序列进样的毛细管电泳序列分析技术已经发展成为在线酶分析的另一种强有力手段,以实现高时间分辨和高通量的酶分析在线检测。该文从快速序列进样的角度,综述了近年来毛细管电泳序列分析技术在线酶分析的研究进展,并着重介绍了各种序列进样方法及其在酶反应和酶抑制反应中的应用,包括光快门进样、流动门进样、毛细管对接的二维扩散进样、流动注射进样、液滴微流控进样等。